This is the introduction to a special section of Tourism Geographies in Volume 20, #1 (February 2018). Not that it was actually published in mid-December 2017.

If anyone wants a copy of any or all of the Commentary papers in this issue, place send me an email request. Additional commentaries will appear in future issues on Volume 20.

Introduction: Tourism Geographies TodayBy Alan A. LewThe year 2018 marks two decades of publishing Tourism Geographies. To celebrate this occasion, we have asked members of the Tourism Geographies Editorial Board, including emeritus members, to write short commentaries on any aspect of the geographic study of tourism that they think might be of interest to our readers. I have organized these contributions into general themes that will be published through 2018 (Volume 20) of the journal. This first set of commentaries is set under the theme of ‘Tourism Geographies Today’. This is not about the state of the journal, which is very healthy, but rather the contemporary role of the geographic study of tourism in and around the world. The contributors include distinguished and emerging scholars, including Deborah Che (Australia), David Crouch (UK), Sanette Ferriera (South Africa), Carolin Funck (Japan), Alison Gill (Canada), Guosheng Han (China), Dieter Müller (Sweden), Piotr Niewiadomski (UK), Theano Terkenli (Greece) and Dallen Timothy (USA). Some of these scholars provide insights into the status of tourism geography study and research in their home countries or regions, while other look at the contemporary role of tourism geography in the broader context of the disciplines of geography and tourism studies.​These commentaries are not intended to be comprehensive reviews of the literature, but rather personal observations that provide insight into both the field of tourism geography and the personality and perspective of some of those who identify with that field of study. While some significant issues on the are raised by the contributors to this special anniversary project, all the authors have a positive opinion on the significant benefits of a geographic perspective on tourism phenomena. This bolds well for the future of a research subject that we have come to hold dearly in our professional lives. I trust that readers will gain some of this sense of enthusiasm, as well, through these commentaries. Tourism geographers (and like-minded scholars) who are not members of the journal’s editorial board should feel free to contact me if they would like to make similar contributions to future issues of the journal. ​

This is the first of what is likely to become an annual special issue of papers devoted to providing critical and deeper insights into the tourism experience of particular places and types of tourism. The papers in this special issue provide a variety of methodological and conceptual frameworks in which to understand tourism impacts and experiences. Through all them, however, the emphasis is less on expanding theory and methods, and more on understanding tourism places.

This issue culminates the 19th volume and year of Tourism Geographies, and the motivation for this special issue has much to do with the historical evolution of the journal. The early years of Tourism Geographies had articles classified into sections titled Space, Place and Environment. Space articles were mostly theoretical in nature, Place articles emphasized tourism places (like in this special issue), and Environment articles focused on environmental topics related to tourism.

As the journal became more popular, the editors had to become more restrictive in that type of articles accepted for publication. We just did not have enough pages each year to publish all of the good articles that we received. This process gave privilege to Space/theory articles over Place articles, the latter of which eventually all but disappeared from the journal. (Environment articles were always rare.) However, we continued to receive many Place articles submissions, because that it what people think of when they think of geography and tourism. I like to think of this as the National Geographic image of our subject area.

In recent years, editorial changes from our publisher (Routledge/Taylor & Francis) has given us significantly more pages to publish articles each year. Initially, this allowed us to quickly clear out a large backlog of accepted, but unpublished, papers. Starting in mid-2016, we introduced “Tourism Places” as a new type of article and as an annual special issue. We did this to recognize the many fine articles that we were receiving that were not focused on interrogating theoretical and conceptual issues. These articles provide insightful case studies that made for interesting reading and could be meaningful for other destinations experiencing similar tourism challenges.

Tourism Places articles have also provided a resource for additional insight into other special issues published in Tourism Geographies. Some of the paper in the recent special issues on “Tourism Planning and Development” (volume 19, number 3) and “Theming Asia” (volume 19, number 2) were originally submitted as Tourism Places articles. Some Tourism Places articles will also be part of forthcoming special issues. Thus, we are excited about welcoming back Tourism Places articles into what Tourism Geographies does, and we hope you will enjoy the range of topics and places in this special issue.

We are very pleased to welcome Professor Xu Honggang of Sun Yat-Sen University (Guangzhou, China) to the senior editorial team of Tourism Geographies. She is replacing Shaul Krakover, who is retiring this year, and joining Michael Hall, Jarkko Saarinen (who recently replaced Allan Williams) and myself as the main editors of the journal. (Note that with this appointment, we are dropping the regional designations for each of the editors.)

Starting in 2017, Tourism Geographies will publish an annual special edition of the journal with the title of "Tourism Places: Perspectives on Tourism Development and Experiences".

Tourism Places will be published in addition to the current five issues per year that is the currently normal frequency of Tourism Geographies. This special edition (like a special issue) will include high quality tourism studies that provide an in-depth understanding of tourism phenomena in a particular place or region, or of a particular type of tourism. The quality of place analysis and insight is the primary criterion for peer review, rather than contributions to conceptual theory.

Tourism Places was proposed as a potential outlet for some of the many papers that are submitted to Tourism Geographies that are more place oriented, rather than theory oriented. We receive a lot of papers that are primarily describing tourism in a place because many people associate place description with the discipline of geography. Some of these papers appear to be quite good, although they violate the journal's preference for theoretical research (see: How to Avoid a Desk Rejection)

Depending on the success of this endeavor, the number of Tourism Places special editions may increase from one in 2017 to more issues in future years. The special edition will still be published under the Tourism Geographies heading, and would, therefore, carry and contribute to the journal's impact factor. Submissions to Tourism Places will be made through the Tourism Geographies ScholarOne portal. Referees will be informed that papers are being reviewed for the Tourism Places special edition, with its distinct editorial orientation. Please see the Tourism Places link for more information on submitting paper for this special edition.

To avoid confusion, with the Tourism Places special edition, this blog site has been renamed from the "Tourism Place Blog" to the "Tourism Space Blog". Feel free to post any comments or questions about this new project below. -- Thanks, Alan Lew

UPDATE 12 February 2017: Special issues may also contain papers designated and reviewed as Tourism Places articles. For more information see the Tourism Places link.

Maybe about a quarter of the papers that I receive have some degree of this problem, although in only about 10% is it significant enough that I need to send the paper back to the author(s) to fix it.

As long as I can remembers, the rule has been that the title or caption, along with the footnotes, to a table or figure should provide enough information so that a reader can determine what the table or figure is showing without having to look for additional information in the text of the article.

This means that all symbols and abbreviations need to be defined either in the table itself or in the notes under the table, and the title needs to be very clear. And this needs to be repeated separately for each table and figure in a paper.

I have often asked colleagues at my university about this when serving on graduate student committees. The vast majority have responded that yes, this is a rule that they know about. However, it is apparently not one that they always think about when advising students (until I mention it) or when writing their own papers.

To me, this should be right up there with the formal referencing of sources that have influenced and informed an academic paper. Well, OK, may be right after referencing sources...

This post is #1 is a possible future series of Journal Editor Pet Peeves! -- Alan

On behalf of the Tourism Geographies community of scholars, I want to thank Professor Shaul Krakover (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel) for his contributions as one of the journal's founding editors. As of September 2016, he will phase out of that position and become an Emeritus Editor for the journal.

Shaul was the first person to encourage me to seriously consider proposing an academic journal with a focus on the geography of tourism when I was a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore in 1997-98. It is very likely that Tourism Geographies, at least as we know it today, would not exist if it were not for his initial insights in that direction. His help with the journal in the years since the first issue came out in 1999 is much appreciated, along with his frequent attendance at Editorial Board meetings, usually held at the annual AAG conference.

​Tourism Geographies welcomes Professor Jarkko Saarinen as the journal's new Editor for Europe starting July 1, 2016. Scholars who have been involved with the International Geographical Union are familiar with Jarkko who is the past Chair of the IGU’s Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change, and where he is the current Vice-President of IGU. In his regular job, Jarkko is Professor of Human Geography (Tourism Studies) at the University of Oulu, Finland. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Botswana, where he is significant research interests.

Jarkko has published several articles in Tourism Geographies related to his interests in tourism development and its socio-cultural and economic impacts, sustainable and community-based tourism, global environmental change, wilderness studies and the construction of the ideas of nature, and culture and indigeneity in tourism.

​On behalf of everyone who has supported Tourism Geographies since its first issue in 1999, I want to thank Professor Allan M. Williams (University of Surrey, UK) for his contributions as the journal's founding Editor for Europe. As of July 2016, he will phase out of that position and become an Emeritus Editor for the journal.

Allan has been a valuable member of our core editorial team, whose energy and enthusiasm for Tourism Geographies was a tremendous gift toward establishing a strong foundation for us and securing our reputation over time. He certainly made my role as the journal's editor-in-chief much easier, as well as more enjoyable.

I am sure that authors feel really bad when they submit an article to Tourism Geographies (or any journal) and it gets a desk rejection -- i.e., an editor decides not to send a paper out for anonymous review. There are several reasons for doing a desk rejection, including a poorly written paper with many grammar and other problems. But the most common reason that I encounter is that the paper is primarily a case study that does not address a theoretical or conceptually debated social science issue. For that type of paper, here is a typical paragraph that I might send to explain my decision:

Tourism Geographies is a social science journal and we primarily publishing papers that address theoretical issues grounded in the social sciences. Your paper lacks a significant theoretical research question (or at least it was not clearly defined) and is mostly dealing with issues related to a specific, though very detailed, case study. Your conclusions, for example, only address the case study and do not offer findings that inform a debated conceptual problem that would be of interest to a global audience. Because of this issue, I will not be sending it out for review.

When I tell people this in writing workshops that I sometimes conduct, someone often asks if that means I would never accept a case study. The answer, of course, is no. Case studies are important. But they are not the most important part of a good paper. Here is some advice that I once received about doing research, and which I try to instill in people (students and colleagues) who I advise.

"When you think about your research, the primary research problem should be entirely unrelated to any one specific case study. You should temporarily forget the case study and just focus on defining your conceptual problem, making sure it is well grounded in theory. You should be able to ignore your case study completely, and still clearly see what the theoretical research problem is. That problem should be one that can be answered by different case studies, not just the one that you happen to be in a position to pursue at this time."

"Once you have defined the research problem in this way, then you can turn to the case study. The main question about the case study then becomes, why is this case study especially suited to answering or addressing the theoretical research problem that you have defined."

This is what I am looking for when authors submit a paper to Tourism Geographies. I have no problem that there is a case study, but most importantly I want to know what the conceptual problem is that the case study is helping to resolve. Secondarily would be the question of why this case study is especially good in addressing the conceptual problem.

This approach has helped me enormously in my own conceptualization of research projects and papers. Hopefully this tip will help others, as well. ​Alan A. LewEditor-in-ChiefTourism Geographies

Update 24 May 2016 - METHODOLOGY & OTHER ISSUES:Following the guideline above will not, of course, guarantee that you will avoid a desk rejection from a Tourism Geographies editor. Some of the other issues that our group looks for include:

methodological rigor,

originality and significance of the topic (including potential reader interest), and

overall depth of thought and expository style.

In addition, each of the editors of Tourism Geographies will consider these aspects in different ways based on their knowledge of your topic. We do our best to be objective and consistent, but we are all human and inconsistencies can sometimes arise.

Update 24 May 2016 - LACK OF OTHER RESEARCH: One indication that a paper is a case study that does not contribute to theory is when authors state that their research is significant because very few others have looked at their topic. This is made worse when the lack of other research is the one and only reason that the research paper is considered a significant contribution to the literature. Lack of research on a topic does not equal significance -- it could mean that others found the topic too insignificant to pursue. It also does not demonstrate a contribution to theory. In my experience, the use of this justification usually points to a mostly descriptive case study.

Update 8 October 2016 - "TOURISM PLACES" SPECIAL EDITION: Starting in 2017, Tourism Geographies will publish a special edition titled Tourism Places: Critical Perspectives on Tourism Development and Experiences. This special edition will feature well crafted case studies that give insight into tourism in a place, with less concern for the development of social science theory. One special edition is planned for 2017, but two or more editions may come out in future years based on demand. Additional information on the Special Edition of the journal can be found on the Author Notes page of this website.